baby girl

It has taken a bit longer to post this than I would have liked. A combination of issues conspired to keep me from bothering with this until now, not the least of which was the fact that the baby's pictures were already posted on Facebook, which drained some of my motivation. Also, I am not sure what blog name we are giving to our baby girl at this point.

Golden started having contractions late Sunday night two weeks ago (the sixteenth). We headed to the hospital a little after midnight for monitoring after consulting with the doctor. I remember thinking that this was going to make for a very bad Monday if the baby did not actually come out.

Around 3 AM the doctor told the hospital to move Golden into a delivery room so she could break her water at the break of dawn. Apparently, we have different notions of what the break of dawn is, because the doctor showed up around 8:30 AM, which was about an hour-and-a-half later than what I understood the break of dawn to be.

During delivery, the doctor noted that she had never seen a baby wriggle so much at that stage, so she commented that we have a feisty baby on our hands. With two weeks experience, I do not disagree with this assessment. Our healthy baby (six pounds, thirteen ounces) was born at 1:31 PM that afternoon. This is notable because it was on my sister's birthday and on the anniversary of when I asked Golden on our first date.

With NJ I spent almost all of my time at the hospital. Since Golden's mom was at the house taking care of NJ, I did spend a couple of hours every day at the house, and I had a few more errands that I had to run between the house and the hospital. That broke the day up nicely for me, though it probably made things a tad more boring for Golden.

We found out right before we left the hospital that a kidney issue that had been found on our sonograms had cleared up. It was one of those things that the doctor told us usually does heal itself by the time the baby is born. It still feels like a bit of a miracle, and is quite a relief.

Tomorrow we have to go in for the latest in a series of weight checks that the doctor ordered on our daughter. She lost a lot of weight in her first four days, but has gained back pretty regularly since. Both Golden and I think it is a bit ridiculous that we have to go in for this specific weight check because this one is just because she didn't technically reach her birth weight in the last weight check. They should have enough data to see she is growing very rapidly.

Anyway, I have been meaning to get to this and now I have. Hopefully, I can get on a regular schedule shortly now.

seeking direction

The laptop is a lost cause, so I will be posting from the home PC for a while. I will probably get back on track with posting after the baby is born. I will try to update when it is possible until then.

I don't like stopping to ask for directions. I know it is very cliche, but in my case that stereotype is true. I will stop and ask for directions if I have to, but I have to have come to the point where it is a necessity. I do not know whether most women understand why a lot of men will not stop to ask for directions, so that is what I am going discuss in this post.

Men, and I have to use myself as an example, generally do not like to admit to weakness. I doubt the reason for this is much deeper than that men do not want to feel weak, either physically or intellectually, but this tendency runs deep. Boys who run to their mothers when things are bad are called sissies (or much worse). Girls aren't. I know of one situation that illustrated this for me where one guy was teased mercilessly when he sent an email to his department (composed entirely of men) saying he was taking a sick day because he was "feeling weak." I was not that guy.

When a man stops and asks for directions he is admitting that he has a glaring weakness. He is so incapable of finding his way that he has to bow to someone else's superior sense of direction. It may sound crazy to most women and some of the less stereotypical men, but this really is the rationalization involved. Admitting you are lost can be the same as admitting that you are a failure in this area of your life.

I actually take this to a further level. Today as we were in the grocery store Golden got a free sample of some food. I found a way to walk around the display unnoticed. I have a very difficult time accepting even a sample of food for free. This is because I feel like I am putting myself in the position of accepting a handout, and that gives me the feeling that I am somehow not providing for myself. Again, this may sound crazy, but it doesn't make it any less true. I can pay for my food, thank you very much.

not yet a classic

As a quick note before jumping into my topic, the reason I haven't updated like I usually do this week is that I am still working through my laptop issue. When I get that straightened out I'll go back to the old schedule. Trust me, I am highly motivated to get that stupid thing working.

When I was growing up our family watched a lot of classic television. We spent quite a bit of time watching Nick at Nite, as well as what was offered on other channels. As I grew a bit older, what qualified as classic television changed. At first, I Love Lucy and Get Smart were the general range of what was considered classic. Slowly, more and more recent shows were added to the schedule until Newhart was inserted into the lineup when I was in high school. I questioned at that time how such a recent show could be in a lineup of classic shows. I didn't really complain because I liked the show, but it did not make sense.

A few days ago I found out about a couple of shows on TV Land, which is a rough equivalent of Nick at Nite. These shows take the cake, in my opinion, as far as calling a show that is not old enough a classic. Third Rock from the Sun and Scrubs are now on TV Land. Third Rock first came out when I was a freshman in high school, and Scrubs first came out after Golden and I were married. It has not even been officially retired. How can either of these shows be considered classic television yet? They have both aired in this decade.

Classic television should either be stuff I that came out before I was born or stuff that I only vaguely remember because I was too young. It shouldn't be something that I could have watched when it originally aired after I graduated from college. I shouldn't be able to clearly remember when classic television first aired. That would make me old.

anti virus

I have had a few viruses on my computers in the past, but I have actually taken quite a bit of pride in not having had many major issues with them. This past night has been the exception to that rule, though.

When I got home from the grocery store I saw that the laptop that I had left on was off. When I booted my machine I got an alert I had spyware and asking if I wanted to scan for it. This is funny because it was the malicious software and not my virus scanner that provided this alert.

I don't know how people who don't know much about PCs mess with this. I consider myself reasonably knowledgeable, and it has been a rotten night for me. I can't imagine working through this without some knowledge of how to investigate it.

I am to the point where I can get rid of all of the issues until I reboot, then the issues that I was having recur. For the life of me, I don't know where this thing is hiding when it appears that it has gone away. At this time of night I no longer care.

pop my bubble

I have told this story to a few people, but I think it is new to most everyone in blog land.

I think everyone has had some disgusting habit at some point in their lives. One of these habits that I used to have was spawned from my miserly nature. For a little while I never threw chewing gum away. I just figured that if there was still wear left in the gum, why toss the dime or quarter that the gum ultimately cost away? It always felt like a waste to toss gum that had not been completely used up.

I would gnaw on the same gum day after day and keep it on my nightstand when I slept. I would occasionally add a stick, but I wouldn't throw any of it away. This probably lasted two or three months, and by that time I had a rather large wad of gum. If I remember correctly, toward the end I would break off a chunk of gum from the large wad and chew that rather than the entire thing.

All of this came to an end when a little girl who was visiting our house got into my wad of gum one day. At that point I figured that enough was enough, I kicked the habit, and I never looked back. I have since found other ways to express my frugality, so I don't cringe near as much when I toss some used, but not completely used, gum. It's progress.

er

I know that I am getting to this a little late. I hope to get back on schedule shortly. We'll see how that goes.

Today, NJ fell down and cut the inside of his lip. It was one of those things that is unavoidable, but that didn't lessen the severity of the cut. I was at work when Golden called me asking what I thought she should do. I had no advice other than to call the doctor and see if it sounded serious enough to take to the ER. Ultimately, the doctor's office informed us that a trip to the ER was probably unnecessary.

There is very little more frustrating than when your child is injured and you do not know what the next course of action is. We have been very close to taking NJ to the ER on a few occasions and every time we have decided not to go because we either know that they will not do anything that we can't do at home, or that the injury is probably not severe enough for the ER.

Really, compared to some of the ER visits that other people who read this site have had to make, we have been very fortunate so far with NJ. We haven't had any broken bones or anything like that yet. Even so, since he is an active and risk-taking boy I expect that we have more tough calls to make in the future.

questionable character

I watched the movie You Kill Me this weekend. The story is about a mob hitman who is sent from Buffalo to San Francisco to deal with his alcoholism, as it is interfering with his work. The movie was so-so. It had some funny moments, and I am sure that some people would be a little drawn into the relationship that the main character establishes with a woman he meets while working for an undertaker. None of that appeared to be targeted to a person with my tastes, though. There is really only one reason this movie is noteworthy. It messes with my head a little to have a protagonist who I am supposed to care about who is also such an unsavory character.

Generally, I like it when the protagonist is shown to have weakness. No one is perfect, so it is not good to build characters that portray perfection. There is a point where I start getting a bit uncomfortable, though. It is so frequent that a protagonist about whose welfare I am supposed to care is actually far beyond flawed. For example, Pirates of the Caribbean, while entertaining, was largely a two-hour justification for the evils that composed piracy. In the Godfather series, and pretty much any other movie about organized crime, we are invited to see the world through the mobsters' eyes rather than the victims' of those mobsters eyes.

I suspect that the movie writers for these specific kinds of movies purposely try to make things a little ethically uncomfortable for the audience. The absence of this discomfort may make an otherwise entertaining movie bland. I'd still prefer to be taking the view of someone a little more ethical.